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Plan9 is now Officially Open Source

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the now-isn't-that-special dept.

DrSkwid writes "The OSI have approved the revised license for the plan 9 operating system according to attendees returning from this year's Usenix Bof."

2 of 399 comments (clear)

  1. More information by PhysicsGenius · · Score: 5, Informative
    Screenshot
    Latest release notes
    Download the source (Warning: requires identification--privacy advocates maybe be excluded here)

    This is really great news for Linux. For too long we've been trapped in the out-moded hierarchical/graphical paradigm. Plan 9, with its revolutionary "factotum" and "secstore" structures, could really provide a breadth of fresh hair to the Linux kernal, putting it head and shoulders above Windows.

  2. Re:Viral or free? by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Informative
    If it's one of the viral types I don't want to accidently look at any of the code for obvious reasons.

    The reasons aren't obvious. I've seen this myth before, notably from Microsoft employees. The idea that you can be "infected" by simply looking at GPLd code is nonsense. The GPL explicitly covers only derived works of the code. If you looked at a GPLd algorithm and reimplemented it, somebody would have a hell of a time arguing in court that it was "derived". This is doubly the case for the vast majority of GPLd code, which is written by people who don't have huge piles of cash and who probably have a disdain for the legal system as well.

    The idea that some random geek, or even a big company, is going to sue you on a legal platform as wobbly as "judge, he looked at it, so the rest of his work is clearly based on ours" is somewhere slightly above absolute zero and in any case applies just as equally to proprietary code, as the case of SCO shows.

    Ironically, proprietary code is generally far more "infectious". I work on Wine - if I were to have seen the Windows code, I would be immediately banned from working on it, indeed, probably I'd be banned from working on most GPLd code. The EULA for Windows is extremely vague about such things, and Microsoft have armies of lawyers and it's quite feasable for them to sue me or others on a virtually non-existant legal basis. The reverse is not true.

    I see that this post has been marked as a troll. I'm not sure it was, but this FUD should not be propogated any further regardless.